Ban Ki-moon Over Tehran

Is there no point at which we conclude that the United Nations has evolved into an organization that is not just flawed, not just in need of reform, but fundamentally, structurally and incorrigibly hostile to American values and the cause of freedom in the 21st century?

The latest – if not last -- straw on the camel’s back: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit this week to Tehran for a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Iran’s rulers are the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism; they are under UN Security Council sanctions, illegally building nuclear weapons while refusingto allow the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct inspections; they are in clear violation of the UN Genocide Convention; they are sending cash, arms and troops to support the Assad regime’s slaughter in Syria; they are persecuting Christians, Baha’i and other religious minorities and using the most brutal methods to crush dissidents.

Ban knows all this. He knows, too, that the Tehran meeting is intended, in the words of the government-controlled Kayhan newspaper, as a “slap” to the U.S. and “the last volley against the liberal-democratic system…” Apparently, none of this matters to Ban.

Nor does it matter to the rulers of the more than 100 counties that belong to the NAM and who are honoring Iran with the presidency of their organization for a three-year term.

Founded in 1961, the NAM used to claim to be outside both the American and Soviet orbits – viewing the former as no better than the latter. But such states as Cuba, a Soviet satellite, were admitted for membership anyway, ensuring that the Kremlin’s interests would be served while Washington’s were not.

The collapse of the USSR did not prompt the NAM to realign. Today, Iran, Venezuela and other anti-American states largely dictate the organization’s agenda. The Riyadh-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference, 56 states plus the Palestinian Authority, a bloc the late scholar Bat Ye’or characterized as a “would-be, universal caliphate") also has a hand on the tiller.

This global anti-democratic alliance enjoys an automatic majority in the UN General Assembly. In the Security Council, autocratic Russia and China exercise veto power. Within this framework, one UN agency after another has morphed in ways that would have shocked even George Orwell.